Image to PDF — Free Online Tool on Toolpile
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About Image to PDF
Converting images to PDF sounds trivial — wrap the image bytes in a PDF container and you're done. In practice the choices around page size, orientation, multi-image ordering, and JPEG vs lossless encoding decide whether the output is a 2 MB readable scan or a 50 MB unprintable mess. The tool handles the conversion; what follows is how to set it up so the result is what someone receiving it actually wants.
The four common reasons people convert images to PDF: (1) submitting a scanned or photographed document where the recipient explicitly requires PDF (passport applications, insurance claims, legal filings — JPEG attachments are routinely rejected by these systems), (2) bundling multiple images into one shareable file (a series of receipts for an expense report), (3) preserving image content in a fixed-layout, view-anywhere format that prints predictably across operating systems, (4) creating a portfolio or archive that won't be re-arranged by an image-viewer's sort logic.
PDF wraps the original image as an embedded object — typically as a JPEG-compressed image inside the PDF for photos, or as a lossless image for screenshots and graphics. The result file is roughly the source image size plus a few KB of PDF structure. Converting a 5 MB JPEG yields a ~5 MB PDF; converting a 30 MB camera RAW yields a 30 MB PDF (the RAW gets converted to JPEG inside the PDF first).
The biggest single failure mode is when people generate a PDF from photos taken with a phone — and forget that camera-roll JPEGs can be 6-12 MB each. Ten photos = a 60-120 MB PDF, which most email systems reject (Gmail's 25 MB cap is the common ceiling). The fix is to either compress images before converting, or use the tool's resize-to-fit option to downsample on the way in.
Every PDF page has a fixed size, expressed in PDF points (1 point = 1/72 inch). A4 is 595 × 842 points (210 × 297 mm); US Letter is 612 × 792 points (8.5 × 11 inches); A3, A5, and Legal exist; you can also use a custom size that matches the image exactly. The default for this tool is A4 because it's the global standard outside North America, where Letter is more common.
When the image's aspect ratio doesn't match the page (very common — most phone photos are 4:3 or 16:9, while A4 is roughly 1:√2 ≈ 1.41), three behaviours make sense: **fit to page** centers the image with white margins (good for printing), **fill page** crops the image to fill the whole sheet (good for borderless display), **page-fits-image** sets the page to the image's exact dimensions (good for screen viewing — no margins, no waste). If you're producing a PDF for someone who'll print it, default to fit-to-page on A4 or Letter. If it's for screen viewing only, page-fits-image gives the cleanest result.
Orientation: portrait or landscape. Most tools auto-detect from the image — a 1920×1080 photo gets a landscape page, a 1080×1920 photo gets a portrait page. Mixed-orientation batches (some portrait photos, some landscape) produce a PDF with rotating page orientations, which is correct but visually disconcerting; force a single orientation if you need consistency.
When you drop multiple images, they become consecutive pages in the order you added them. Drag-to-reorder before clicking convert is the standard pattern — once converted, reordering means going back to source images, dropping in the new order, re-converting (or using the Reorder PDF tool on the resulting file).
Filename ordering trap: dropping `IMG_001.jpg, IMG_002.jpg, … IMG_010.jpg` from a file picker often produces order `IMG_001, IMG_010, IMG_002, IMG_003, …` because lexicographic sort treats `10` as smaller than `2`. To get a numeric order, either pad numbers with leading zeros at the source (`IMG_0001.jpg`) or drag images one-at-a-time in the order you want.
Consistency across images matters when the PDF is meant to be a single document: same DPI (don't mix a 300 DPI scan with a 72 DPI screenshot — the page dimensions become inconsistent), same colour profile (sRGB vs Adobe RGB — the latter is darker on standard viewers), same approximate exposure if they're photographs of pages (a brightness mismatch between page 3 and page 4 reads as an error). Pre-process images to consistent settings before converting — Image Compress and Image Format on this site can normalise a batch.
Why is my output PDF so large?
Because the source images were large. PDF wraps the image bytes; a 12 MB JPEG produces a ~12 MB PDF page. To shrink the result, compress the source images first (Image Compress) or run the resulting PDF through Compress PDF afterward (which will re-encode the embedded JPEGs at lower quality). Output size is almost always a function of input size, not a flaw in the converter.
Will it preserve EXIF / GPS data?
No — most image-to-PDF tools strip EXIF on embed (a privacy-safe default). If you need GPS coordinates or camera model preserved (legal evidence, photography portfolios), embed the image's EXIF as a PDF metadata field manually, or use a desktop tool with explicit EXIF retention.
Does this work with HEIC photos from iPhone?
Yes — modern browsers decode HEIC via the `<img>` tag now (Safari natively, Chrome via WASM polyfill bundled by this site). The tool re-encodes HEIC to JPEG inside the PDF for compatibility (most PDF viewers don't render HEIC natively). If the result looks wrong on iOS but right elsewhere, the encoding round-trip is fine — iOS PDF viewers handle the JPEG-inside-PDF without issues.
Can I add multiple images per page (like a contact sheet)?
Not in this tool — it's one image per page. For a contact sheet (multiple thumbnails on a single page), use a desktop tool like Adobe Bridge, or arrange the images into a single composite image first (using a layout grid in any image editor) and then convert that composite to a single-page PDF.
Why are my page orientations mixed in the output?
Because Auto orientation picks per-image based on aspect ratio. If you want all pages portrait (or all landscape), pick that orientation explicitly — Auto is for cases where you want each photo displayed in its natural orientation. Mixed orientation is correct PDF behaviour but can look odd when scrolling through.